IF ever there was a time when the devil was loose, active, and potent in human affairs, that time is now, in the days in which we live. The devil's dominion is the enthronement of error, falsehood, deception, lies, and moral rottenness; and when was this dominion ever more potent than in these years of the existing generation?
The devil bound! And yet the people who claim to be the most enlightened and occupy the very top waves of modern progress, do not hesitate to give out that it is with them a matter of serious doubt whether there is a God, a Providence, a soul to live after this life, anything eternal but matter, any Lord but nature, any retribution but what natural laws administer in this world, any principles of morality but expediency, and scout all idea of a personal incarnation of the Deity, of atonement by divine sacrifice, of justification by faith in the merits of a Substitute, of any coming again of Christ as King to judge the world and reign in righteousness.
We look abroad upon society in general, and what do we see?—Reverence, that great balance-wheel in the economics of life, scarcely exists any more; oaths are nothing; good faith is as scarce as grapes after the vintage; and all moral bonds are trampled down without compunction under the heels of greed and lust and deified selfishness. Falsities and treacheries confront us unblushingly at every point. People not only make falsehoods, speak falsehoods, print falsehoods, and believe falsehoods, but they eat them, and live them, and drink them, and make them one of the great elements of their being. One-half, at least, of all the eye can see, or the ear hear, or the hands touch, or the tongue taste is bogus, counterfeit, pinchbeck, shoddy, or some hash or other of untruth. A man can not move or open his eyes without encountering falsehood and lies.
In business, in politics, in social life, in professions, and even in what passes for religion, such untruthfulness reigns that he who would be true scarcely knows any more whom to trust, what to believe, how to move, or by what means to keep his footing, amid the ever-increasing flood of unreality and deception.
And yet the devil is bound! Do I color the picture too deeply? Look, consider and see for yourselves. Is not the world full of people, many of them your neighbors and personal acquaintances, some of them under your own roofs, in your own homes—people with their apostles, male and female on the rostrum everywhere with applauding crowds around them—people to whom the church is a lie; the ministers of the Gospel a fraud; the sacraments absurdity; prayer a weak delusion; the Bible a dull record of superannuated beliefs; special providence an impossibility; a personal God or devil a superstitious conceit; moral accountability to a future judgment a thing to be laughed at; society, marriage, and the body of our laws mere faulty conventionalities; government a mere device of the ambitious and self-seeking; immortality a mere fiction; and even life itself something of an impertinent imposition or a mere freak of mother nature.
A broader philosophy, a more compliant church, a more active humanity disdaining theological dogmas and positive creeds, a larger liberality to take every one for a child of God who refrains from denouncing the devilish atheisms and heresies of the times—these are the flags he hangs out for the rallying of his unsuspecting dupes. And see how he induces men and women to usurp ministerial functions without ministerial responsibilities, and gives them power on the plea of breaking down denominationalism and making better saints without any church at all; how he prostitutes the pulpits to entertaining sensationalisms, defying all sense and sacred decency, or narrows them down to sweet platitudes which serve to bury the true Gospel from those whom it was meant to save—and how he stirs up the ministers of place and influence to say and make believe that all this attention to sacred prophecy is nothing but a stupid craze, that the holy writers never meant what they said, and that all these ill-bodings touching the destiny of this present world are but the croakings of birds who love to fly in storms! And yet he is bound! O ye people, on your way to the nearing judgment of the great day, "be not deceived; God is not mocked." You may be sincere, but that is not enough. Eve thought she was innocent and safe when she took the devil's recommendation of the forbidden fruit; but her trustful confidence did not excuse her.
The existence of a devil is not a myth, but an awful reality, and to his doings and destiny we have other relations than that of mere spectators. His dread power over those who will not have Christ as their Saviour is not a nightmare fancy, or the dream of disordered mental digestion, but a thing of living fact. And these solemn and momentous revelations are Jehovah's finger-boards set up in mercy along the path of human life, to point out the places of danger and the way of safety. To despise, neglect, or disregard them is not a characteristic of wisdom. To refuse to note and heed them is to try the insane experiment of seeing how near you can graze the brink of perdition, and yet win the credit of not tumbling in. Can you be wiser than God who made you? Then mark the signals He has given and follow them implicitly.—J. A. Seiss, D.D.